The whole book is out of copyright and can be downloaded for free.
In the DJVU version,
a) you can see every detail in facsimile, and
b) the OCR has been done, so you can cut-and-paste plain text.
The book contains
-- a fairly conventional exposition of introductory physics, plus
-- homework questions, plus
-- hundreds and hundreds of examples of practical applications of
physics, including
-- more than 500 illustrations.
Some examples include:
On page 19: It applies Pascal's principle to the example of
firefighting, i.e. why you want your water reservoir to be
higher than the tallest building in town ... which seems nice
and practical to me.
On page 85: Newton's cradle. This is a great demo, often not
emphasized enough these days. It illustrates the flow of momentum.
On page 88: A hydraulic ram is used to raise water above the level
of the source. Very practical. I had never thought of that.
And so on. You get the idea. On almost every page you can find
some sort of practical example. Many of the examples exhibit a
sense of style and a sense of fun. There are many other ways of
asking about the same physics as in following example, but this
way is IMHO amusing:
On page 462: «In what direction must a fish look in order to see
the setting sun? See Fig. 485.»
The diagrams alone have considerable value. For example, a couple
of years ago Ludwik was asking questions about how wheel bearings
work. I couldn't find a diagram that showed the crucial structures.
The diagram on page 140 would have served nicely.
One big downside of the book is that it often gives "drive-by"
examples. That is, many examples are /mentioned/ but not really
/explained/. IMHO that makes the book unsuitable for its intended
purpose as a text for students ... but it remains useful to the
folks on the list, who can use it as a source of ideas and nice
diagrams, and who can fill in the explanations as needed.
Another big downside is that some of the examples are just plain
wrong:
On page 37: It gives the pressure versus height in the atmosphere
as an example of "Boyle’s law". Alas, this is wrong physics.
This is the eleventeenth example of why I recommend teaching the
ideal gas law, and consider it a big mistake to teach the "simplified"
laws such as "Boyle’s law" and "Charles’s law". The "simplified"
laws practically beg the students to make OTBE errors, even if the
text is technically correct ... and things only get worse when the
text is wrong. See http://www.av8n.com/physics/gas-laws.htm
especially http://www.av8n.com/physics/gas-laws.htm#sec-otbe
More generally the book falls prey to the all-too-common bad habit
of stating the form of some law without stating the limits to its
validity.
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Bottom line: All-in-all, I consider this a classy book and a valuable
resource.